Page 20 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

Drakonians do love their lavish celebrations.

Each year, they invite all the kingdoms to visit, a gesture meant to ensure our alliances remain strong.

But this year, I could sense the air was thick with suspicion.

The king has only one child, a daughter.

She is beautiful, and undeniably clever.

Princess Aithne would make a fine leader for her people, if only drakonians weren’t so archaic in their ways.

Now, the king must find someone to marry her.

I’ve noticed the way the king watches me, how he’s noticed the way Hadrian leans in close. He knows.

And I don’t like that wicked smile on his face.

I don’t like it at all.

Tabitha Wysteria

‘Amira, look ahead and stop fiddling with your rasguita,’ Hessa chided gently, her tone exasperated but fond.

Alina ignored her, tugging at the unruly headpiece that, as always, she had managed to wear incorrectly.

A portion of it drooped inelegantly over one eye, obscuring her vision despite Hessa’s countless demonstrations on how to wear it properly.

With a sigh of resignation, Alina lifted the long wooden staff with both hands, arms quivering slightly as she held it aloft.

After several seconds, she let her arms drop with a groan.

‘It hurts,’ she muttered.

‘Because you’ ve no muscle, amira.’

They had spent the last few days cloistered within the palace walls, forgotten by Mareena Noor and seemingly invisible to the rest of phoenixian society.

Hessa did not appear to mind. In fact, Alina was beginning to uncover the desert princess’s serene nature, an ease with herself that Alina found both enviable and entirely foreign.

Hessa rarely showed anger or impatience; she did things when she felt inclined and with a certain carefree grace, utterly unconcerned with how others might perceive her.

So they had carved out a little corner of sanctuary for themselves by bathing in warm waters, sharing meals, exchanging stories beneath the golden arches of the palace.

Hessa tended to Alina’s wounds with unwavering tenderness, cleansing them with salves brought by silent-footed servants.

And every morning, she insisted upon training.

Not fighting, not yet. Hessa had taken one look at Alina’s trembling limbs and declared that she first needed to build strength, stamina, and discipline.

Alina had, of course, rolled her eyes at the remark, only to receive a sharp whack on the back of her knees with a slim training rod for her insolence.

‘Lift,’ Hessa instructed now, her voice like silk over steel.

With a groan, Alina raised the staff once more, striving to keep her arms level with her shoulders. Her muscles burnt in protest, but she forced herself to endure, her eyes fixed on the rod in Hessa’s hands, the ever-present threat of another tap spurring her onward.

‘Drop.’

Alina let her arms fall, breathing out a sigh of relief.

The door creaked open. Both girls turned to find Mareena Noor framed in the archway, her expression unreadable, her presence commanding.

Alina’s heart skipped. Had they overstepped by using this room without permission?

It had been unoccupied, sparsely decorated save for a few scattered cushions, a board game or two, and a wide terrace that overlooked the river snaking through the city below.

‘I have always been curious to witness the training of a Dunayan,’ Mareena said, gliding into the room with the ease of someone used to being watched.

She reclined with languid elegance upon a chaise longue—gilded gold and white cotton, regal in every detail.

Alina tried not to stare, but Mareena’s beauty was difficult to ignore.

Her long black hair spilt over her shoulders in a cascade of ink, dotted with golden bands entwined through the strands, as though she’d begun to tie it up but changed her mind at the last second.

Phoenixian women, Alina had noticed, adorned their hair not for practicality, but purely for aesthetic pleasure.

‘She’s yet to grow muscle,’ Hessa said, tone flat, as though announcing a mild inconvenience rather than an insult. Alina scowled. ‘Once her strength has come, I’ll teach her something worth watching. I’m afraid for now, my lessons are rather dull.’

Mareena’s lips curled into something between amusement and challenge. ‘Then perhaps you and I might put one another to the test.’

She rose with the grace of a dancer, and Alina’s eyes, entirely of their own accord, followed the movement of her body.

Mareena’s figure was lush with curves, curves that drakonian women would bind and conceal beneath heavy silks and stifling corsets.

But Mareena wore hers like a crown, her garments designed not to obscure but to celebrate.

‘A Phanax against a Dunayan,’ Mareena mused, approaching Hessa with the calculated grace of a huntress.

‘It promises to be quite the spectacle, don’t you think?

’ She turned her gaze upon Alina, and those crimson eyes burnt with such piercing intensity that the drakonian princess instinctively took a step back.

‘Are you going to talk me into a nap, or shall we begin?’ Hessa retorted with a teasing lilt, twirling the wooden rod in her hand.

Alina slipped quietly to the side, settling onto the chaise longue Mareena had so elegantly vacated.

Her brown eyes were wide with anticipation, her breath caught somewhere between her chest and her throat.

This was something no one of her generation had ever witnessed before.

A Dunayan and a Phanax squaring off, two titans in a dance of blades and discipline.

Hessa lifted the rod slightly. ‘How do you want to play?’

Mareena didn’t answer. She only smiled, and lunged.

They moved with startling speed, so fast that Alina’s eyes could barely track the strikes and dodges.

But within moments, the contrast between the two warriors became evident.

Hessa was fluid and precise, her movements like wind over sand—graceful, fluid, almost hypnotic, as though every strike was a motion plucked from an ancient dance.

Mareena, in contrast, was a storm. Her power was raw, explosive, each movement a calculated strike that could shatter bone or stone.

Yet not once did she land a hit. Hessa evaded them all with a flick of her wrist, a sidestep, a sway of her hips.

Alina watched in silence, awe shimmering in her eyes, until the awe gave way to sorrow.

A deep, aching sadness crept over her, heavy as a mantle.

This… this was what she had been denied all her life.

If only she had been allowed to join the Red Guard, to train like her brother, like the sons of noble blood.

By now, she might have been their equal—strong, skilled, unafraid.

But instead, she had been left to wither in silks and slippers, her hands soft, her strength untested.

Her fists clenched in her lap. Her eyes prickled. If things had been different, if she had been different, could she have defended her family? Could she have stopped the slaughter? Perhaps not. But at least she might have tried. She might have stood between them and death.

Unable to bear it any longer, Alina stood abruptly, the chaise longue creaking beneath her as she moved. She turned on her heel and fled the room, fleeing not from the princesses themselves, but from what they represented, everything she had never been allowed to become.

She stormed down the corridor, directionless yet driven, the ache in her chest a cruel compass. The truth pulsed through her veins like liquid fire, a relentless reminder of just how fragile she truly was beneath the armour of defiance.

‘Alina?’

She froze half-way down the hallway at the voice, wiping furiously at the tears that clung to her lashes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I didn’t mean to run out like that…’

Steady hands settled upon her shoulders, firm yet gentle, and turned her around. Embarrassment bloomed across her cheeks like wildfire when she found herself face-to-face with Mareena, who was watching her with an unreadable expression as she wept.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mareena asked, brows drawing together in concern. ‘We weren’t going to hurt each other, I swear it.’

A brittle laugh escaped Alina, followed by another wave of tears. ‘I know that ,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You think I ran because I was afraid… because I can’t fight.’ She swallowed a sob. ‘But it’s not that. It’s that I’m so useless. So god-damned weak.’

‘You are neither weak, nor useless,’ Mareena said firmly.

‘Yes, I am!’ Alina’s voice cracked as she screamed the words, the frustration and grief pouring out in torrents. ‘I couldn’t save them! If I’d been stronger, if I’d trained harder, I could have…’

‘Could have what?’ Mareena’s grip tightened. ‘You think I am strong?’ Her crimson eyes flared with emotion. ‘And yet I could not save my little brother Zahian. Do you think me weak because of it?’

Alina faltered. ‘No… but it’s not the same. You weren’t there. If you had been…’

‘Hessa was there when her sister Sahira was killed. Do you believe she is weak?’

‘No, I didn’t mean…’ Alina’s voice faltered beneath the weight of guilt.

‘We are not weak,’ Mareena said, her voice quiet but unyielding. ‘And neither are you. Strength is not about the sharpness of your blade or the breadth of your shoulders. It is how you rise when the world breaks you. How you carry on when everything else says you should fall.’

Alina bowed her head, shoulders slumping beneath the invisible burden she’d been dragging with her for days, for weeks, for what felt like years. Exhaustion throbbed in her bones. It was hard, so hard, to keep fighting when all that had once tethered her to this world was gone.

‘I ran away…’ she whispered.

‘Look at me, Alina.’

She lifted her gaze, reluctantly. But the moment their eyes met, she was caught in the storm of Mareena’s stare—those red irises glinting with something more than defiance. With something deeper. A fire forged of pain and survival. Of vengeance. Of purpose.

‘You didn’t run away,’ Mareena said, her voice as soft as it was resolute. ‘You survived. You saved yourself. You are the last Acheron.’ Her expression gentled. ‘You saved your bloodline.’

Alina didn’t move as Mareena leaned in closer, her hands lifting slowly to the edge of Alina’s rasguita. Her fingers hovered for a heartbeat, almost reverently, before gently tugging the cloth away from Alina’s head. It slipped down like silk, pooling around her neck.

Mareena took a half-step back, as though to admire her properly. Alina’s breath caught when the phoenixian reached out, brushing a fallen strand of blonde hair behind her ear with the softest of touches.

Those crimson eyes roamed over Alina’s features, taking in every scar, every imperfection, every piece of her. They finally drifted upwards to the place where Alina’s horns had once proudly curved, now reduced to jagged stumps.

But Alina didn’t flinch. The shame that usually clawed at her spine was silent. She let Mareena look, let her see. Even clothed, she had never felt more exposed.

‘Don’t hide what they did to you,’ Mareena said, her voice a breath against the quiet. ‘Let the world see who you truly are.’

Who am I? Alina wanted to ask. The question was there, etched into every breath, written across her face.

And Mareena, it seemed, could read it.

‘A survivor, Alina Acheron. That is what you are. A survivor —the last of her name.’